


i don't miss you at all

by Lihgtwood



Category: The Dark Artifices Series - Cassandra Clare, The Wicked Powers Series - Cassandra Clare
Genre: Angst, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Pining, kitty reunion, what i imagine their story to be like in twp
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-05
Updated: 2020-05-05
Packaged: 2021-03-02 19:55:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,776
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24022441
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lihgtwood/pseuds/Lihgtwood
Summary: A vignette of Kit and Ty's story in The Wicked Powers.“Do you want to throw knives?”Ty shrugs. He walks over to Kit and takes the throwing knife from him, their fingers very nearly brushing. He steadies his posture and draws back his arm. Kit knows that he is silently counting to three in his head because that is how they were taught to throw knives and they were taught to throw knives before there was a fork in their paths. Before the singular path of Kit and Ty diverged into two paths of Just Kit and Just Ty, before the hurt and the tears and the grief. Before the I love yous and the I wish I hadn’t met yous were spat out and couldn't be taken back. Before everything happened.
Relationships: Tiberius Blackthorn/Kit Rook
Comments: 21
Kudos: 116





	i don't miss you at all

**Author's Note:**

> And I'm sleepin' fine  
> I don't mean to boast  
> But I only dream about you  
> Once or twice a night at most  
> \-- I Don't Miss You At All, FINNEAS

He sustains himself on memories. Pieces of the past, half-forgotten, nearly washed away with the inexorable passing of time. In the liminal space between sleep and wakefulness, the helpless moment just before he slides into darkness, his thoughts are filled with him. He has no control over this. It’s like a slideshow flicking through his mind, weaving a vivid picture. Flickers of dark, sweeping eyelashes, slender fingers gripping the base of his neck, the sweet curve of his lips.

It is not that he has forgotten him. It can never be that. Kit sees him in the squeal of the kettle, the swell of the waves, and hears him in the sound of his sister’s bright, high laughter. He feels him in everything: earth, water, air, fire, as natural as drawing breath. But whether he likes it or not, the years have done their damage. He cannot quite conjure the image of him as clearly in his mind as he used to. In his mind, his nose is a bit blurry. The colour of his eyes is not what Kit remembers them to be and there is something off about his mouth. Much like the lingering scent of perfume after someone has left the room, Kit can only parse him from left-behind fumes, can only trace the outline of him in the dark cave of his mind as he counts the beats to fall asleep.

One.

Two.

*

These days Kit is a wanted man. Hot commodity. Everyone vies for the power thrumming through his veins: the Seelie, the Unseelie, and the Shadowhunters. The threat of war looms over the sunny countryside of Devon, casting shadows on the verdant grass. It’s a war that spans many years, filled with bad blood, simmering resentment, and political treachery, at the centre of which just so happens to be Kit. He carries within him magic that he never asked for, bestowed onto him only by virtue of his ancestry.

Jem helps him keep it under control. They practice out in their backyard, standing a foot away from each other as if about to play a game of catch like father and son, but Jem watches him carefully.

“Keep calm,” he advises. “Steady your mind.”

Kit wants to tell him that he is keeping as calm as he possibly can. A bead of sweat traces a path down the side of his face. He focuses all his energy into the pads of his fingertips. Slowly, warmth burgeons in his hands. It intensifies into throbbing pain and eventually reaches a burning heat. He recoils with a hiss of pain. Bright sparks fly from his hands, bouncing from the wooden fence, to the roof gutter, to Mina’s outdoor playground which he and Jem assembled on a sunny afternoon after much frustration at the confusing instructions, and finally land on the window. Cracks spider out across the glass.

All out of energy, Kit lets out a sigh and flops down onto the grass. He doesn’t have to open his eyes to see the grave look on Jem’s face. His hands crackle with the remnants of whatever energy collected there. Pure, unbridled energy, as strange to him as to anyone else.

*

He knows that his time is up when he sees Tessa receive a fire message in their kitchen. It’s been a long time since he’s seen magic like that. In Devon, they use emails and texts and letters, trying their best not to use magic in case it turns into a smoke signal and alerts people to his location. Before this, Kit very nearly believes that they are a normal mundane family. Naïve, now that he thinks about it.

Tessa’s face is thrown into blue light as the fire message coalesces out of thin air in front of her. She doesn’t need to read it to know what it says. Before she even opens the message, she turns to look at Kit, worry knitted into her features. She bites her lip.

Kit’s stomach roils with dread.

It’s time for war.

*

The Institute is just as he remembers it. It stands stonily with the gravitas of something that has witnessed centuries’ worth of senseless wars, and this time, it’s no different. Kit’s feet hit the carpeted floor soundlessly as he emerges from the other side of the portal. It greets him like an old friend.

Everyone is here. All factions of the Shadow world have gathered to discuss how they will proceed with the incoming faerie threat and it’s not only that. This is not only a war waged between the Shadowhunters and the Faerie, but there is a new threat, malice no one has ever seen before originating from different worlds. It’s inter-dimensional, inter-species, and even for all the Shadowhunters have withstood in their recklessness and bravado, Kit finds himself wondering if they will make it out alive at the end.

*

He knew he would be here. He has been expecting him ever since he set foot into the portal.

Here he is, living, breathing, in the flesh. Ty. It's like looking at a different person altogether. This is not the Ty that Kit remembers. Of course, the Ty that he remembers, the image that he has been turning over in his mind, is immortalized at the age of fifteen, never growing a day older. But this is the real person, no longer the figment of Kit’s imagination, who regards him from beneath the precise tilt of his jaw. He is taller, sharper and paler. His years in the Scholomance have carved his cheeks out harsher and made them more gaunt. Soldier-like, he holds his whipcord limbs close to himself and his shoulders are stiff with tension. Any warmth that Kit used to be able to see in him and learned to find in him back when they were younger is gone.

Small things, but Kit feels them set them apart like a gulf, a wide chasm that he cannot cross. The full magnitude of the time and distance between them sets in. He has always known of the inevitability of this meeting. There was no way they could avoid each other forever, much like two asteroids hurtling through space in an immutable course, just bracing for the imminent collision.

There is no emotion in Ty’s eyes. The face which he could once read, apparent to him only and to no one else, is now inscrutable. The only comfort Kit finds is in the colour of his eyes. Sea grey. One thing that has not changed, at the very least.

They appraise each other like strangers.

“Kit.”

“Ty.”

“Centurion Blackthorn,” he corrects.

Only now does he notice his black cloak and the pin of the Scholomance affixed to his breast. A leafless stick.

_Primi Ordines._

“Right. Sorry, I forgot.”

“It’s alright.”

Silence. Innumerable emotions hinge on the space between them where no words can fill.

*

He wishes they could start over. Rewind the clock. Let the three years spent apart fall away. Let them return to when they were fifteen and joined at the hip, wandering fearlessly into tide pools. Even though now that he has a proper family – a mother, a father, and a baby sister who all love him and whom he loves dearly – a sense of loss still gnaws at him sometimes, a dull ache in his chest that Kit knows all too well who the source of is.

But these are old wounds, left to fester. It must be wishful thinking to think that everything can return to the way it used to be at just the drop of a hat.

A boy grabs Ty by the waist and pulls him in. The boy – Anush, Kit recalls, they’ve met before – is clad in the same Centurion uniform as Kit, with the same dark cloak and the same stuffy silver pin. Backs turned to Kit, the two of them look like identical replicas of each other, uniform products of a regimental system. Anush whispers something into his ear, so close that Ty must feel warm breath ghost against the shell of his ear. It’s too close to be anything but intimate.

Ty reaches out to push the boy away. He must not want to exhibit affection so publicly. As he places his hand on Anush’s shoulder to gently distance himself, Kit catches a flash of silver on his fourth finger. A ring. It gleams at him like a taunt.

Time has changed everything.

Kit’s stomach clenches. He can only turn and leave.

*

Ty talks politics. He talks about big and important things, like about the Clave and the Downworld and the faeries and a whole other load of stuff that Kit doesn’t understand. It seems as if it is the only thing he can talk about.

During dinner, he launches into another explanation about Clave politics yet again. There’s a lot of mention of meetings and how they need to keep their alliances with the Downworld strong, lest a stray rabble upends their fragile peace. Since Ty’s the best Centurion of his class, his opinion carries weight. Everyone listens to him, nodding and murmuring in quiet agreement.

Keeping his head down, Kit sullenly pokes about his food with the tines of his fork, not really having much of an appetite. He chases a piece of broccoli around the circumference of his plate.

*

During one of his sleepless nights, he wanders around the Institute with no destination in mind. He only realizes that his feet lead him to the training room when he is in front of its doors. Ironic that this is the place he comes to find peace in considering how adamant he used to be against picking up a weapon. If he came here three years ago, he might’ve just palmed a few knives and fled. But this place is far too intertwined with his own history for him to just leave like that now. It's his home and the home of people he loves. An irrevocable connection anchors him down to it.

He picks up a knife and throws. Thwack. It lands just several inches away from bullseye. Heat gathers in his palms. He’s not restful. Kit takes a deep breath and rolls back his shoulders. When Jace visited Devon the last time, he taught Kit a breathing technique to control his powers after having experienced a similar thing himself. Its effectiveness is questionable, to say the least, but he does it anyway if only to fake some semblance of control over the unknown force inside him.

Breathe in. He grips his second throwing knife. He’s acutely aware of the way his fingers fit along the handle.

Breathe out. He throws.

Thwack. Closer to bullseye, but still not quite there yet.

He’s just about to throw his third knife when he hears footsteps behind him. Kit whirls around to meet the cold, unaffected visage of Ty Blackthorn. His heart seizes.

“What are you doing here?”

“Practicing,” Kit replies, feigning casualness, though his heart pounds furiously. This is their first time speaking since the day he arrives at the Institute.

Ty remains where he is, lingering by the entrance, a dark figure hemmed in by the door.

It’s Kit’s turn to ask. “What are you doing here?”

“Couldn’t sleep.”

“Do you want to throw knives?”

Ty shrugs. He walks over to Kit and takes the throwing knife from him, their fingers very nearly brushing. He steadies his posture and draws back his arm. Kit knows that he is silently counting to three in his head because that is how they were taught to throw knives and they were taught to throw knives before there was a fork in their paths. Before the singular path of Kit and Ty diverged into two paths of Just Kit and Just Ty, before the hurt and the tears and the grief. Before the _I love you_ s and the _I wish I hadn’t met you_ s were spat out and couldn't be taken back. Before everything happened.

One. Washed in the moonlight, Ty looks beautiful and dark. A nocturnal creature. His arms are pale and lightly corded with muscle. His figure is slight but Kit knows that is no sign of weakness. He has felt the sturdiness of his body before, the slyness of his movements to know that this boy will not be the one to bow at the first gust of wind.

Two. His collarbones jut out from beneath his pale skin like cliffs. Shadows gather and pool in the concavity of his clavicles, they wrap around his arms like a lover. Where he stands, he looks like an entirely different person, only a remnant of the boy Kit leaves behind three years ago. The Scholomance has changed him. It has instilled in him a new hardness, like a knife transformed against the brutality of the whetstone.

Three. He releases it with the smooth flick of his wrist. The knife slices through the air in a perfect, near-straight line and sinks itself in the wood where the bright red dot is painted. The hilt shivers with the twang of the impact before coming to a rest.

“Show off,” he says a bit breathlessly.

Ty ignores this. He is not looking at Kit. Instead, he looks ahead, eyes trained on the hilt of the throwing knife buried in the wood. “I heard Jem trained you in Devon.”

“Yeah. He did.”

“We should spar.”

“Should we?”

“Yes.” Ty brings his arms up and arranges his feet into a fighting stance. “Let’s see how we have grown.”

“I am hardly ready for this. I’m not warmed up.”

“Neither am I. Let’s do this. Shall you go first or shall I?”

Kit throws the first punch, yet Kit is the first one down. Sure, Jem taught him how to fight, but his days in Devon are mostly spent sun-kissed and gambolling around in the meadows, languishing in the warmth of the sun, war as an afterthought at the back of his mind. But Ty is different. Unlike Kit, he has put his three years to good use. Ty’s movements are more honed than he remembers them to be. He is swifter and more fleet-footed. He’s an economical fighter, not a movement wasted. It only takes a series of calculated moves to knock Kit down. Ty sits on top of him, pinning him to the ground with his knees. The cold hiss of metal presses against his throat, tracing out an icy arc. Kit glances up at Ty. They are inches apart from each other, so close that their breaths rise and mingle as fine mist.

Are they both thinking of a different time? The two of them drenched in the darkness of his old basement, barely visible even to each other. Kit, sprawled out on the dirty floor, unable to move, thrashing wildly in the dark, when suddenly the sun shifts and a band of light slants in through the cracks in his window, throwing a pair of grey eyes into light, if only for a flicker of a second.

Kit laughs against the blade. It lightly kisses his skin. “Some things never change.”

To feel him now, in the flesh, to feel the warm press of his body against his own when he has fantasized about him for so long sends a shock of exhilaration running through him. Joy. Gratefulness that he is alive and safe and in front of him, where he can touch and breathe him in. Hunger.

“I wanted to see if that was the case.”

“You used your real knife. What if you cut me?”

“It is perfectly safe. If I wanted to cut you, I would already have.”

Fair enough, Kit thinks, though he suspects it’s not just from the surety of his skill that he feels comfortable wielding such a dangerous weapon, but something else, perhaps underlying resentment or a hint of bitterness. There may be no way to tell. His face is shuttered, devoid of emotion.

A beat passes. “I think I should apologise.”

A near-imperceptible sharp intake of breath.

“For what?”

“I left without a word.”

“Yeah. You did. And not a word from you since.”

“I didn’t hear anything from you either,” Kit mentions, if a bit petulantly. “You never visited also.”

“Why did you leave?”

“I –”

The words dig their heels into the floor of his tongue. “I was hurt. And confused. I – I didn’t know what I was doing, there was so much going on. The war, the Faerie, my new powers, Livvy – ”

Ty’s entire body goes rigid at the mention of his dead sister’s name. Kit presses on.

“It’s just that – that time, I wanted – ”

Say it, Kit. It’s a simple explanation, one that he has been rehearsing in his mind all this while. He knows the words, has practised and memorized them, but they just will not come out.

“I – I…”

Ty’s face is inches away from him, sharp eyes scouring every part of his face except for Kit’s eyes. He is quiet and considering, showing no signs of impatience. The weight of his gaze feels crushes Kit, drawing all breath out of him.

He actually thinks he might choke. Sweat beads at his temples. Warmth crackles at Kit’s fingertips, threatening to evolve into something deadlier. Control this. Control this, Kit. You can do this. Eyes squeezed shut, he gathers his thoughts just like Jace taught him, whittling his mind down to a needlepoint.

His mind is a black cavern, ringing with silence. The only thing it is aware of is the warmth on top of him.

The truth dies on his tongue.

Without opening his eyes, Kit says: “Yeah. That’s all it was.”

He waits. Guilt trickles into his chest. Time seems to stretch out before him in an eternity and Ty’s response never seems to come. Kit almost thinks that for all the suspenseful build-up, the words never make it out of his mouth and it’s something he says only in his head. 

But the pressure at his neck falters. The knife is gone. Kit cautiously opens his eyes.

Ty watches him. Shadows move behind his eyes in thought. His brows are knitted into a frown.

“Oh,” he says. Disappointment is plain in that word. The room lurches into silence again.

“Sorry. Too much happened in LA for me to stay there any longer. I needed to forget.”

“Okay,” Ty says.

“I was selfish and self-absorbed, I should have been there for you. I’m so sorry, Ty. Is it too much to ask for us to be friends again?”

As he says this, a bad feeling takes root in Kit’s chest. He is filled with the sense that he is doing something wrong, that this is not helping anything but is the equivalent of placing a plaster on the three-year old festering, bleeding wound that is their relationship. It is the fraudulent doppelganger of reconciliation. It makes him uneasy.

Ty blinks. Owl-like, expressionless.

“Okay,” he says simply. “Let’s be friends again.”

*

Friends again. It doesn’t go the way he expects. Sure, they’re perfectly civil to each other. When they run into each other in the hallways, they can meet each other’s eyes and acknowledge each other. But outside of this two-second fleeting interaction, they don’t talk at all. Last time, Ty used to seek Kit out, a constant companion to his adventures, but now Ty hangs around only with the other Centurions talking business, strategizing about Clave politics and the Accords.

Once, Kit tries asking him, “Can I talk to you for a second?”

Ty, who stands conversing with Anush and another boy in hushed tones, whirls on him: “What?”

The other two Centurions stare at him silently. All eyes on him, conversation comes to a halt.

Stunned, Kit says, “Nothing. It’s just that the Institute has been so busy. Everyone’s bustling about but I don’t know what they’ve been doing.”

Ty sighs. “I can’t tell you. It’s private information, but rest assured the Centurions have it under control.”

Kit nods tightly. His hands are shoved deep into his pockets. All the Centurions watch Kit, except for Ty, whose gaze is fixed steadfastly on the ground. Their flat stares do not shy from making it apparent that he is dismissed from this conversation.

He flushes. “Right,” he says, and leaves.

Later on, he corners Ty, finding him deep within the shelves of old tomes in the library, pale hands fluttering over their spines.

“What was that?” he demands.

Ty startles, then relaxes when he sees its Kit. “What was?”

“Earlier today. Why can’t you tell me what’s going on?”

“Involving the Institute’s Shadowhunters in the highly specialized operation the Clave has assigned to the Centurions is not wise. Too many liabilities.”

“Even when I’m the person who this whole war is about? Even if I’m the one everyone wants and no one will tell me anything?”

His eyes are lowered, shadowed by his sweeping lashes. “Rules are rules, Kit. I am a Centurion now and it is my duty to report directly to the Clave.”

There is a moment of incredulous silence.

“Alright.” Kit’s hands come up to pull at his hair. He seethes, anger like a rising tide, but he tamps down on it. “Alright fine.”

*

It’s not a friendship. It’s a betrayal. Somehow, this feels worse than missing him. To have spent so many days and nights thinking about and missing him, pondering, celebrating, reminiscing him, loving and despising him, wondering how the smooth curve of his cheek would fit in the palm of his hand, only to return to find that the person he has been missing is not that person at all. He looks like him, smells like him, feels like him – Kit remembers that night in the training room, the rough fabric of his cloak, the wiriness of his limbs, his body arced over his like a perfect parenthesis, supple as a seal – but he doesn’t know anything about him.

In the heat of his rage, Kit thinks how maybe it would have been better if he did not return and they did not see each other at all.

*

Every day pushes them closer to the war. It’s not a matter of if, but when. An atmosphere of expanding dread hangs over the Shadow world as they brace themselves for the eventual blow, and today, everyone stops breathing. Found two blocks away, two Shadowhunters hang from two X-shaped posts, marks stripped, all their blood drained from them. The first warning.

The group of Centurions that went out in the morning to observe the crime scene has come back, and all of them are silent and uneasy. Ty is not faring well at all. He enters the Institute the last out of the group, paler than usual, wan even, with his headphones jammed over his ears. Worry is etched all over his face.

It must be instinct, muscle memory. Without thinking, Kit goes up to him and says, “Are you okay? Do you want to go somewhere quiet?”

For a moment, he accepts Kit’s comforting hand at his back, leaning into his touch sweetly, but then all of a sudden, as if only just registering his where he is and whose touch it is that he accepts, he jerks away from Kit sharply.

“No,” he says uncertainly. He flushes. His eyes skip rapidly from one point on the carpet to another. “No. I’m fine.”

Kit retracts his hand as though scalded. He shoves it in his pocket – hard.

But one thing is obvious here: that even their bodies remember a shared history that their owners refuse to acknowledge, surfacing old truths that have been locked away. Like for instance, that once, Kit was the only one privy to his rare, full-bodied smiles.

He leaves Kit standing at the entrance of the Institute, watching the wreath of thorns emblazoned on the back of his jacket until he turns a corner and vanishes.

*

Blood, hot and viscous, runs down the side of his face. A shudder wracks his body. He still feels disoriented from the first blow. The room swims in front of his eyes and his breathing is laboured. Try as he might, the power lying dormant within him refuses to surface from its depths, abandoning him at the most pivotal moment.

The tip of a sword traces the line of his jaw, halting at his chin.

A malevolent smile.

*

He wakes in a strange bed. The first thing he sees is the tall, shadowed rafters of the Institute. A moment later, his eyes adjust enough to see that he’s in the infirmary, bundled up with bandages. So he’s still alive.

It’s late. The room is drenched in darkness, save for a small nightlight that has been left turned on for him. Every movement sends pain lancing through his body. He lies very still for some time, listening to the raspiness of his breath and the call of the birds at night as tries to get accustomed to his injuries.

Then, too belatedly, he realizes that the nightlight has not been left on just for him. A dark figure is hunched in a chair beside the bed, his sleeping face softly illuminated by the glow of the nightlight. Perhaps it's the nightlight, or Kit’s foggy pain-induced state, but there is something different about Ty here. His face, so usually pulled into a grave frown nowadays, is completely at rest. Sleep hazes out the edges of his demeanour, making him look soft, cherubic, infinitely younger. Vaguely, Kit wonders how similar he looks to how he did back then.

Ty’s eyes snap open. The illusion shatters.

“You’re awake.” He quickly stands. “Are you okay? Do you feel fine?”

Kit’s eyelids feel heavy. He blinks slowly. Sleep threatens to pull him down again. He can hardly register Ty’s many questions much less respond to them coherently so he stays silent, looking at him but not really looking at him. He blinks again. The room shifts.

“You’re shivering,” Ty notes.

“Cold,” he mumbles. This always follows large bursts of his power. It uses up all the energy in his body and runs him out. His throat is scraped dry. “Always gets like this. Get up here.”

Hesitation. “What? I could always find another blanket. I am sure there are lots around here.”

“Get up here,” Kit insists. Sound reasoning gives way to fatigue. He may regret this when he wakes up later with a clearer mind, but right now, that’s the least of his concerns. His teeth chatter. “This blanket’s not doing anything for me. I need a heater. You’re the closest thing available.”

Kit shuts his eyes. It doesn’t matter if Ty agrees to do it or not, he tells himself, he just needs something to warm himself up against. He finds himself waiting with bated breath for his answer anyway.

A moment passes. Then, the metal frame of the infirmary bed rattles as Ty slides himself into the space beside him. Kit’s heart lifts. The bed is only meant for one person, so they have to make do. Sharp limbs navigate around each other, bodies shift to make space. There is a lot of whispered: _are you okay? Is this fine for you?_ and it feels a bit like rediscovery, reconquering old territory, each person relearning the grooves of the other until their bodies are perfectly slotted together like jigsaw pieces. Kit’s head is on Ty’s chest. Ty’s arm is on Kit’s waist. Kit’s hand is wrenched in Ty’s shirt. And their legs – tangled together hopelessly.

He smells like ink and parchment and soap. Warmth seeps into Kit’s side.

“Thanks.”

Ty does not respond.

After a moment, Kit says, “Do you think they’re going to come back for me? I mean, I was their main objective.”

Slender fingers grip the back of Kit’s neck protectively. The pressure makes him molten, turns his limbs to jelly.

“As long as I’m here,” Ty murmurs with quiet conviction, “No one will take you anywhere.”

This time, sleep successfully comes to claim him. When he opens his eyes, dawn begins to creep in. His head still rests on Ty’s chest. Kit goes back to sleep. The next time he opens his eyes, Ty is gone.

*

In a way, what happens in the infirmary is a different version of the watchfulness Ty used to have over him when they were younger, when Kit will open his bedroom door and find Ty asleep, slumped against the wall. But just when Kit thinks that they are one step closer to going back to the way they used to be, Ty makes sure not to let him think that. All affection from the night in the infirmary is gone. He’s back to bustling about with his group of Centurions, taciturn and coldly indifferent with Kit. Every morning the group of them file out the Institute doors, brisk and dignified, and every evening they return, weary if they have been doing something unpleasant all day, or excited if they have a breakthrough in the case. Throughout the course of this, however, Kit never manages to sneak in a proper word with him. Considering the number of opportunities for them to bump into each other, Ty must be avoiding him. Kit never gets the chance to ask him why, that night, it’s him who waits with him and not any of the others.

Kit’s near-death experience has put an edge on everyone. In fact, it unsettles everyone so much that Kit has been charged with not leaving the Institute. He’s not even allowed to set so much as a foot outside. It’s driving him mad. He has spent so much time in the training room throwing knives until the action becomes a bit lacklustre to him, and he has tried to pick up a few books from the Institute library but he has never been a book person. There’s no way he’s going to survive this. If the faeries or demons or whatever don’t kill him, boredom is. He needs fresh air and sand beneath his feet. A healthy dose of sea breeze, too. 

Nighttime, the halls are empty and silent. He cracks his door open a bit. It should be safe. Surely whoever who wants to get their hands on him will not have anticipated this small predilection of his, his love for the beach. His years spent in Devon where temperatures usually dip to about 48 degrees have made him crave for the sunny Los Angeles beaches, to feel warm sand beneath his feet. On seeing that the coast is clear, he creeps along the hallways as quietly as he can, grateful for the stealth that his Shadowhunter abilities avail him with. Pale moonlight filters in through the tall Institute windows, casting skewed rectangles of light onto the carpet. He makes it as far to the gate of the Institute before a hand fists into the back of his shirt and wrenches him back. Kit stumbles back.

“Where do you think you’re going?”

Ty looks angry. His arms are folded across his chest.

Kit stutters. “Why are you up so late?”

“You were thinking of leaving the Institute.” The statement is accusatory.

“What? No.” A guilty flush spreads across Kit’s cheeks. He jams his hands in his pockets. “Okay, fine I was.”

“You are not supposed to leave.”

“Oh, come on!” Kit argues, exasperated. “You can’t expect me to be holed up in this place for months. I’m literally going mad.”

“You could get taken away again. It is very dangerous to be alone by yourself.”

“Yeah, by myself. So as long as I’m with someone it’s fine,” Kit says. A pause. “Do you want to follow me to the beach?”

Ty does not have to respond. The answer is already written plainly on his face. “No, Kit.”

It’s not like he isn’t expecting this answer already, but the rejection hits differently. Most of their memories were made at the beach, after all. Kit laughs, but it’s barbed. “What is up with you? You know, last time you would have said yes. You would have said fuck it and we’d go.”

Ty is very quiet for a while. His eyes are lowered, but Kit knows that it is no sign of submission. In a composed voice, he says, “I am a Centurion now. I have a duty to carry out to the Clave, and me not letting you become a liability to this war is one of them.”

The word plunges into his heart like a knife. “Is that all I am? A liability?”

Ty flinches, regret on his face. He exhales thinly through his teeth. His voice is flinty. “Go back to your room or I will alert everyone.”

It is pin-drop silent. Kit’s hands are balled into fists. He trembles slightly.

“It’s like I don’t even know you,” Kit snaps. “Three years later and you come back cold and hating me. You don’t even want to say a word to me. I don’t understand you at all. You’re like one of _them_ now. One of those anal rule-sticklers who go around all high and mighty thinking they are helping but actually creating more damage.”

Ty growls. In one swift movement, he shoves Kit. Unprepared, Kit loses his balance and lurches into the dying switchgrass. He lands on his ass hard.

For a second, they look at each other, stunned into silence. Shock is plastered all across Ty’s face. He looks at Kit and then at his own outstretched hands, as if not comprehending himself to be capable of something like this. Then Kit recovers. Anger and hurt spring up in him.

He surges up to his feet, shoving Ty right back. Ty stumbles back.

“You’re not the Ty I was friends with,” Kit snarls. “I have been missing you all these years but I regret it! I regret missing you!”

Ty glowers down at him, shoulders trembling. His hands clench and unclench furiously at his sides. By now, their voices have risen to barely modulated whispers. Anyone can hear them. “You don’t know what I’ve been through. You don’t know what I’ve experienced!”

As if Kit has been dousing gasoline on his words the whole time and only now he does he hold a lighted match to the wreckage, the final blow, he spits:

“Fuck you.”

The words escape him, as if a hand reaches down into his throat and wrests it out of him. Black and vitriolic, spewing pus, laced with angry welts all over. It feels dirty. Horrible. Ty flinches. Hurt and shock are visible in his eyes. Repressing the instinctive remorse that surges up at the sight of Ty’s hurt face and every single thought that follows, Kit turns tail and runs.

He races down the path to the beach as fast as he feet can carry him, not even allowing himself to look back, only dimly aware of the sharp cry of surprise behind him. The wind whips his hair against his cheeks. His legs pump hotly and the soles of his sneakers slap rapidly against the granite. His lungs burn but he doesn’t care. He doesn’t even care if Ty wakes up the entire Institute to pursue him. Everything dissolves, falling away into the backdrop. The only thing that he knows and understands in this strange state of numbness is the all-encompassing urge to run into the fine line between the sky and water where nothing must exist, a liminal space, and just disappear forever. Escape from the war, from Him, from everything.

But Ty has always been the faster runner. Just as his feet hit the sand, a heavy force knocks him down from behind. He goes sprawling into the ground. Ty turns him over by his shoulder forcefully so that they face each other.

“Stop it,” he pants. Both of them are heaving now, shoulders rising and falling heavily. “Stop running away.”

“Get away from me!” Kit shouts, scrambling to get up.

Ty grabs him by the collar of his shirt and pulls him close, gripping it so tightly that his knuckles are blanched. Now they’re face to face, horrible anger to horrible anger. Kit can see every single one of his fine lashes, his twisted mouth.

“You know what,” Ty breathes angrily, “You’re right. I am different. We are different people now. There is no denying it. You cannot expect to just show your face after hiding it for three years and expect everything to be fine.”

“I did not hide,” Kit snarls. “You are the one who refuses to talk to me. You are exactly the kind of person we grew up hating.”

“You abandoned me!” Ty explodes.

At once, Kit stops struggling. His hands fall back to his sides limply. The words are like a slap to the face. For the first time since they meet each other, there is honest emotion written all over Ty’s face. There’s no trying to hide it. It’s plain for all to see. Angry tears leak out, streak after streak, down his cheeks.

“With not a word. You left without even speaking to me, and you tell me it’s because I am part of the bad memories you wished to forget and leave behind in LA. I thought we were friends.”

The sight of Ty crying is like a punch to the gut. Kit can feel his own eyes burn.

“No,” Kit croaks. “You are not a bad memory. Not at all.”

“You left me alone. First Livvy, then you. I had nowhere else to go.”

“Ty,” Kit pleads, but what is he pleading for? He doesn’t even know. He has no case, nothing left to say.

“What is the Scholomance like?” Kit asks softly, at last.

The look in Ty’s eyes is faraway. “Cold,” he says bitterly.

Kit’s heart wrenches. His hands come up to brush Ty’s tears away from his eyes but Ty rears back, jerked back into the present. He lets go of Kit.

“Get away,” Ty says, staggering back. He wipes his tears with the back of his hand hastily, but Kit will not let him go. Kit springs to his feet. He reaches out for Ty, but Ty bats his hands away.

“Ty, listen to me,” Kit implores, but Ty takes a few more steps back. “Come here.”

Kit lunges forward to grab a hold of him but Ty fights back energetically, writhing in his grip. He reaches for him and receives a sharp elbow in his gut. He tries again, and this time, he succeeds. But as soon as he manages to grab ahold of a fistful of his shirt, Ty worms out of his grip gracefully and sweeps out a leg to trip Kit. Kit swerves sharply to the left to dodge it, but in their fighting, they don’t notice that they’ve been teetering on the edge of a steep embankment. Kit’s foot meets nothing but thin air. He topples down the slope, and with his hand fisted in the front of Ty’s shirt, he brings Ty along with him. Down, down, down, plummeting to the bottom of the embankment. Pain explodes all over their bodies as they collide with rocks, pebbles, debris, concrete until they finally their world stills and they come to rest at the bottom.

Their bodies are flat against each other. Kit, lying on top of him, pulls himself up onto his arms. There is a streak of dirt across Ty’s cheek. Kit’s thumb drifts over the sharp arch of his eyebrow.

Ty looks at him. It’s clear from his face that he is still not ready to relinquish whatever anger there is remaining in him. He cries out and tries to shove Kit off him. A pointy elbow catches across Kit’s nose. His head spins. Ty’s knee comes up to dig itself in Kit’s gut, making him double over in pain, but he refuses to let go of Ty. His hands grip his shoulders persistently, dodging any of Ty’s attempts to shove Kit off him. Slight wetness trickles from his nose.

“Stop! Please stop,” Kit cries.

Ty ignores him, battering his fists against Kit, his face scrunched up with fury.

“Get off me!”

One second Ty’s hand strikes him across his cheek, leaving half his face stinging, and the next his head is on Kit’s shoulder, face buried into the crook of his neck in bitter tears. It’s not clear when the fighting and the kicking and the punching stops and they start pulling each other closer as if they cannot bear to leave even a space between them, with a kind of ferocity that betrays the long time they have spent apart. Two spent swimmers, lost in the sea of time and distance, clinging desperately to each other in survival. Here, with his body moving beneath him, warm and familiar, Kit is struck with the sheer enormity of his longing. Dams break. Lands flood. Everything which he once thought alien comes back to him. Yes, yes, this is what he almost loses, what time almost steals from him. His eyes, his nose, the muscles of his shoulders. The sweet bow of his back, the delicate curl of his knuckles. To think that he can almost have forgotten this! Him! Piece by piece, it all comes back to him. Kit’s body wracks with shudders as he tucks his face into the crook of Ty’s neck and breathes him in, full of unmitigated wanting.

Their kiss is hot and wet and angry. Long overdue, like the fruition of something that has been in the works for a long time, and now that it’s here, the both of them are so overcome with desire they can hardly speak. Their teeth clack against each other to the point of hurting. Ty bites down hard on Kit’s bottom lip, eliciting a gasp. He digs his nails into Kit’s shoulders, sure to leave marks, tugging him closer, gasping and trembling in the heat of their bodies as they press together closely. His eyes are bright and feverish. His dried tears leave his cheeks wet and shiny, reflecting the moonlight. He sucks in a breath as Kit’s lips rove down the pale column of his neck, unrestrained, biting and sucking tender flesh. Icy fingers find their way under Kit’s shirt, trailing over his stomach. They halt at his belt.

Kit freezes. Their breaths come out in puffs.

“Wait, wait – what happened to Anush? I thought you two were – ”

His eyes flick to Ty’s hand, searching for the ring, but it is not there.

“He broke up with me.”

“Why?”

“Not very clear. He said he saw how worried I was when you got injured and he told me that he’s not the one I should be with.”

Kit loses his mind for a moment.

Ty tugs at his belt impatiently, urgently. His lips are parted, yearning to be kissed. Do you want to? The silent question hangs in the air.

Kit almost laughs. He leans in to kiss him obediently, long and slow and dirty. Ty lets out a small shocked noise, but goes pliant against him, melting like butter.

Of course. Of course he wants to.

All their facades, all their pretensions melt away. Everything which Kit thinks unfamiliar soon reveals itself to be traversed territory. Under the cover of night, two people rediscover parts of themselves that they were missing all this time.

*

It is utterly silent, save for the sound of the crashing waves, the quiet chitter of insects, and two sets of breaths. Heavy and ragged, running in tandem with each other.

Ty peels himself up from the ground and dusts the sand off his back, looking around dazedly like a child. Kit, who is lying beside him, watches him silently from the ground. He’s outlined in silver, features softened by the pre-dawn light. The sky begins to hint at the first seconds of sunrise.

Ty turns to him. At first, Kit thinks that he has still not yet let go of last night’s grudges and he braces himself for his cold regard, but all Ty does is blink at him. Then, his mouth drops open into a small, surprised ‘O’.

“Look, Kit,” he says, incredulously. “Look behind you.”

Kit turns around. Washed up on the shore, sitting amongst a pile of rocks, is a bright, red starfish.

Ty’s eyes are wide with excitement. Out of nowhere, a memory appears in Kit’s mind: Ty, speaking with fervour about one of his animals, animated and engaging. So this hasn’t changed either. Fondness strikes him in his chest, knocking all the breath out of him.

“We have to save it. It’s going to dry up on land.”

Kit picks himself up, following Ty as he goes to pick the starfish from the ground. He cradles it carefully with a look of intense concentration.

“Where should we put it?”

“We can’t put in back into the sea, it’ll just wash up again.”

Then Ty stalks off. Feeling lightweight, soft, easygoing, like Ty can ask him to do anything and he will do it, Kit follows him, sea breeze skimming his cheeks.

He follows him over a series of sharp, slippery rocks, then over damp sand at the far-flung corners of the beach. They walk up a steep slope and then, on not finding anything, they go down again. Kit lets him take him wherever he wants, wherever he pleases, content to just play the obedient dog that trails behind him. Ty can do anything to Kit and he will accept it. He holds the starfish in his hands lightly, careful not to bruise it. Finally, they stop at a small recess in the rocks. A tide pool, Kit realizes.

“It’s too deep. Help me set it inside.”

Their fingers brush as Kit holds the starfish with him, cupping his hands beneath it as well. Neither of them looks at the other. Together, they set it into the tide pool.

They don’t take their hands away even after the starfish is fully submerged in the cool water. Though their fingers overlap, Ty keeps his hand where it is. They just sit there and stare at the starfish sitting in the fractured cave of their hands, twitching to life, blissfully unaware of its saviours and the narrow death they save it from. For all that his hands are capable of doing, this is the first time that Kit feels at peace with them. To nurture life, something other than destruction and injury from his hands, and it is all because of Ty.

Their hands still touch. Kit thinks this must count for something.

“I have to tell you something,” he says. Ty does not look up at him. Kit continues. “All of my explanations have been insufficient. They’re wrong, I – I’ve been explaining everything horribly. You are not a bad memory, Ty. Far from it. You are my best memory. The only memory that I think about as often. I thought about you so much when I was in Devon. I thought of you every night before I fell asleep. I’m so sorry for leaving you. I – I can’t express how sorry I am for leaving you. I left because – ”

And here Kit can feel his throat closing up as usual again, but he knows now that it is not something that he should fear. All these years, he has been burying his heart in the ground and for what good? So he clears his throat and pushes the words out of his mouth, because Ty can take his heart into his hands and break it for all he cares. He can make an absolute mess out of it, if only for the extremely slim chance that he might say –

“I love you. And I didn’t want to be hurt by your rejection.”

Ty freezes. He is too shocked to say anything. A second passes, then two. Silence.

“That’s all there is,” Kit says, and it’s true.

After a moment of consideration, Ty says, “How did you know that I would have rejected you?” When Kit has no answer for him, he says, “I love you too.”

Just like that. This is what has haunted Kit for the last few years and it’s so simple.

Kit laughs weakly.

Ty looks at him strangely. “What?”

Kit shakes his head. “It’s just not what I expected.”

“What did you expect?”

“I thought something big would happen but – nothing has changed.”

Yes, nothing has changed. No fireworks, no electricity, nothing. Ty still looks at him the same way and he still feels the same under his fingers. Perhaps, Kit thinks, it is because love has been simmering in the atmosphere around them, always there but invisible, even back then, three years ago. It turns out they have never needed the words. A distant pain fills his chest as he thinks of all the time wasted.

Cautiously, he asks, “Do you forgive me?”

The first rays of light begin to break through the clouds. The cold distance that Ty holds himself with thaws out in the soft light, giving way to something warmer. As he looks at Kit, his eyes are soft.

“Yes,” he says quietly. “I forgive you.”

They stay like that for a few minutes more, crouching at the edge of the tide pool, breathing quietly. The daytime is forgiving. Without even having to say anything, they know that everything hurtful said in the night is forgotten. It’s a new day, a fresh start. In the completed circuitry of their hands, a light burgeons between them that they cannot see, washing them over with peace.

*

They don’t bounce back immediately of course. But slowly, steadily, as a newborn calf learns how to walk, they too learn how to be with these new versions of themselves. There is an indelible mark left on them by the circumstances in which they grow up in, the warmth of Devon and the frigidity of the Carpathian Mountains, but they eventually find the rhythm that has been eluding them. Kit and Ty. Ty and Kit.

It’s liberating. He can kiss him when he wants to and hug him when he wants to. Whenever a stray lock of hair falls in front of Ty’s face, he can be the one who sets it back right. Sometimes he’ll join Ty in the library, big books propped up in front of their faces but only one of them actually reading, and Kit will casually hook his ankle over Ty’s so that he can glory in the sight of a deep, red flush spreading across his cheeks. And if he purposely loops an arm around Ty’s waist or presses him against the wall to kiss him madly while Centurions are in view to let them know that he has claimed their very best, then who’s to say he cannot?

*

Before the final battle, Ty seeks out Kit in his room, holding a Stele to his skin and tracing out runes. Steady hands draw the pattern out slowly with careful thought, much unlike the haphazard and quick way Kit always draws them. Black ink curls around his arm and spans his back once he is finished.

“Why did you need to do that?” Kit asks, attempting for lightheartedness in this tension. “Are my art skills really that bad?”

“I’ve always been better than you at drawing runes. And I need to know that you will be protected.”

The waver in his voice makes Kit turn around to face him. Ty’s face is creased with worry and stress. Kit places a hand on his cheek comfortingly.

“Don’t worry. I’ll be fine.”

Ty’s hand comes up to touch his wrist. “When we’re down there, you’ll never be out of my sight.”

They kiss, one last time, hard and rushed. Ty’s mouth crushes against his. Neither of them wants the kiss to end but someone eventually has to pull away. To reunite only to be torn away so soon – Ty’s fist curls in the collar of his jacket, indignant and fearful.

“I’ll be fine,” Kit repeats. “Don’t worry.”

*

A final burst of power surges from his hands, leaving nothing left inside him anymore. The accompanying chill sets over him. The battlefield is a mess. The floor is littered with bodies and stained crimson. A tsunami of violence surrounds him, threatening to close in on him and crush him. He doesn’t even get the chance to see whether he succeeds in killing the enemy standing before him before his knees give way and his eyes roll back into his head.

Is this the end of him? What an awful way to die, at the hands of someone he doesn’t even know, in the throes of a war he has no particularly strong feelings for. In the few seconds while he can still think, he thinks of his family and his loved ones, consecrating a space in his heart for each and every one of them: Jem, Tessa, Mina, the Blackthorns, Emma, and Him.

The last thing he feels before he knocks out is a pair of hands catching him. Delicate but strong hands. Hands that are made for music and not for war.

*

He opens his eyes to see the ceiling of the Institute and he rasps out a laugh. Still alive. He’s still here. Neither he nor the Institute has outstood the other. There’s no victor emerging from this game this time. Take that, he thinks dryly.

Someone stirs awake beside him. Ignoring the pain, a smile breaks out across Kit’s face, unable to be stopped.

*

They won the war. They fought the fight. Now, it’s time to go home. Kit packs to return to Devon. Clave people, warlocks, and everyone else go back to what they were doing before the war, and the busy Institute that Kit has become accustomed to is all of a sudden vacant, its occupants gone. The hallways are quiet. The staircases, where Kit is so used to seeing people climb up and down in a rush, is empty.

Today, it’s the Centurions turn to leave. Most retire back to the Carpathian Mountains, while others are already assigned to new missions in new countries. How the work never ends.

The Portal, a great fizzling purple thing hanging from thin air, has been set up outside the Institute, courtesy of Catarina Loss. The first of few Centurions go through. Kit and Ty stand a little off to the side, quiet. They both know what the other is thinking. Of course, Ty cannot abandon his duties to the Scholomance. His job is not something that can be off-handedly tossed to the side at the first whim and Kit understands that. He doesn’t want to force Ty to do something he doesn’t want to, it’s just that – it’s _just_.

“So much to never being parted,” Kit says, huffing out a half-hearted laugh.

“Who says we will be parted?” Ty says, smilingly.

“What do you mean?”

Ty tosses him a book. Kit opens it to find that it’s a daily planner for the year, with certain dates marked out in red.

“What’s this?”

“The Centurions get days off some time. I’ve circled all the dates I’m off. Let’s see each other.”

Kit flips through the book some more, looking at all the dates that have been meticulously marked out from the start of the year to the end of the year. There is also a phone number scrawled on the first page. He closes it and laughs.

“You’re allowed to use phones over there? I thought it's strictly fire message or messenger pigeon or whatever insane, outdated method they insist on using.”

A corner of his lips turns up. His eyes are bright and mischievous.

“Lex malla, lex nulla,” he says.

Someone calls out: “Hurry! The Portal won’t stay open forever!”

Kit feels his lips twitch with his own accomplice smile. He’s filled with the overwhelming urge to pull him closer and kiss him, so he does exactly that, making their last kiss for a long time count. Ty returns the kiss with equal enthusiasm. They’re inseparable, hands pulling each other close and then closer, fingers clutching onto the other with such a perseverance only born from an awareness of what it is like to find something after hopelessly losing it for a long time. But this time, though their paths spin out in vastly different directions, he knows that they will find each other, because their paths have always been intertwined with each other. Even as Kit basks in the sunlight of Devon, even as Ty’s footsteps echo through the lonely hallways of the Scholomance. This time, they are filled with new knowledge.

“Portal’s closing! It won’t wait for you anymore!”

They break away and stare at each other. This is the time for last words.

Now or never. Kit says, “Wait, Ty.”

His voice catches in his throat. Ty raises an eyebrow at him, expectant. Should he say it? Kit thinks about it for a while, then he shakes his head. His hands span the width of Ty’s shoulders before he gently pushes him away.

“See you later, Centurion.”

“Goodbye.”

Once Ty is through the Portal, Kit turns and goes back to his room to continue packing his things.

They never needed the words. That much, he knows.

*

At night, before he goes to bed, his thoughts are still filled with him. He remembers him well, because for all the short time they spent together, Kit has mapped him into his mind and committed him to memory. He’s no longer starved and feeding on half-forgotten scraps anymore, no, now he is rich with something so much more than that. He has his secret smiles, his suppressed laughter. The warm feeling of his skin underneath his fingers, their hands tangled together so thoroughly to the point of not being able to discern where one them ends and the other begins. He has his tears and his anger. The stinging feeling on his cheek in the wake of a blow. And he can recall the feeling of the starfish held together in their hands at the dawn of a new day, the end of a never-ending cycle, held in the water as if it was something more than just a starfish.

He doesn’t count the beats to sleep anymore. There is only a single thought, his own Charon of the Underworld, ferrying his mind from wakefulness to sleep. It pulsates in him like a second heartbeat, filling him with an indescribable peace. It is

I love him.

I love him.

I love him.

And he loves me.

**Author's Note:**

> by the way the thing that kit wanted to tell ty but didn't in the end just before they parted was i love you. 
> 
> kit shouldn't have been so insecure at not hearing the words i love you from ty!! he should just have trusted what was unsaid and not been so dependent on words of validation !! because some things are unsaid but that doesn't mean that they aren't there! thank you for coming to my ted talk
> 
> tumblr @ christopherslightwood
> 
> (also sorry for blatantly ignoring the plot about livvy's ghost, i just didn't know how to write her)
> 
> likes and comments appreciated!


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